The Challenge to Democracy
departments themselves, in their organization, express
an obsolete point of view*
In practice, the actual policy followed in the passing
of new laws and the establishment of new institutions
of government has been the result of pressure from
this or that organized group or "interest/' The limits
set to the exploitation of women and children are due
to pressure from groups of social reformers. But even
these may be said to have stood for an "interest"—
the rights of the oppressed: for they do not seem to
have been guided by any general view of the good of
the community as a whole, to be established by the
new legislation. Apart from "reforming" Acts, policy
has been mainly the result of demands by sectional
"interests/' in the financial sense of that word, for
protection or assistance. The Board of Trade is con-
ceived to assist British traders, apparently in com-
petition with the non-British; the Ministry of Agri-
culture is supposed to assist, not the consumers of
food, but the farmers in Great Britain. Thus in legis-
lation and in administration, so far as production is
concerned, the dominant conception of public policy
is that it is a result of a "balance," if not an actual
conflict, of different interests. There is no conception
of a comprehensive "common" good aimed at in the
economic departments of government, nor in the
policy of the Acts affecting production. The actual
situation is the result of an ill-considered and hap-
hazard growth under the pressure of conflicting
interests and the unconscious influence of obsolete
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